The producer, Clancy Chassay, and I flew to America knowing that increasing numbers of people were being made homeless. Many were just ordinary, working Americans who'd never expected to find themselves in such dire circumstances.
From the moment we landed it was clear what was happening was largely hidden - there weren't thousands of middle-class Americans sleeping on the streets in plain view. Investigating further we were shocked at what we found. Shelters across the country were packed to capacity with people who had, until very recently, been living the American dream - the house, the job, the car and the big-screen TV. What was even more surprising is that many still had jobs, but the pay wasn't enough to keep the roof over their heads. All the shelters had waiting lists of hundreds of people; it was clear that there just weren't enough to cope with the explosion in numbers of people being made homeless. With so many people having nowhere to go, we found groups coming together forming new communities of their own. Many had set up camps out of view of the public - in woods, industrial areas or abandoned wasteland - operating in tandem with mainstream society.
Talking to people was easy - we were met with warmth and humility. But getting people to go on camera was much harder than we'd expected. People were very proud, and with money and status determining your position and worth here, being jobless and homeless was a failure too much to bear in public. Many of those staying in shelters had not even told their friends and families they had lost their homes. We met one man living on the streets of Los Angles who spent a chunk of his earnings as a telemarketer on a gym subscription to keep clean and groomed so his employers would never find out. Despite being the most developed country in the world, there is still strong social stigma attached to being homeless in America.
Even more worrying than this, we were told how homeless people feel criminalized by the authorities for a predicament many said was out of their control. Several states have introduced laws making it hard for homeless people to operate - in some parts of the country it is illegal even to sleep in your car at night, yet for some, this is their last option before a life on the streets.
It was these homeless people who proved to be the highlight of our trip. We met so many people who demonstrated such optimism and strength while at their lowest point and who spoke with such wisdom about the system that had failed them. And, tragically, they were all too aware of the irony of their situation - that in the richest country in the world they were struggling to survive.
